


my head keeps on spinning

by orphan_account



Category: CollegeHumor, Jake and Amir
Genre: Gen, Humor, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-11
Updated: 2014-12-11
Packaged: 2018-03-01 01:01:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2753720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sure, Jake's in the hospital, but Amir definitely isn't the one who screwed up his brother's project.</p>
            </blockquote>





	my head keeps on spinning

The lights above Amir's head flickered repeatedly, sounding like bugs crawling into his ears. He’d been quiet ever since Jake told him to shut the fuck up-- more like howled it, to be honest, like a bitch wolf in heat, clutching the arms of the plastic ER chair until they squeaked. Amir hadn’t even been _saying_ that much, god, but by that point Jake’s breathing was shallow and his head was between his knees like a _bitch_ , shuddering and whimpering like Murph was standing over him--but Murph wasn’t even _there_.

Now Jake was on his back, sweat beads peppered across his forehead, eyes glued to the ceiling while he grasped the sheet of the gurney in two sweaty fists. Amir sat in another uncomfortable plastic chair next to him, picking at his nails while occasionally trying to surreptitiously check his phone. He got like no reception in this hospital, which just wasn’t fair, because this would TOTALLY be a thing he should be telling Twitter about.

A nurse--not a hot nurse, unfortunately, some old broad whose tits sank somewhere around her stomach, and who completely ignored Amir when he said so--came up to the bed where Jake was laying, clinging to the sheets like it was the only thing keeping him on the ground. She was a tray with some freaky long needle shit on it behind her.

“Mr. Hurwitz?” she asked, and after a beat of Jake coming back to reality from his white-space ceiling place, both he and Amir answered in the affirmative. The nurse barely even glanced at Amir, which was annoying, because if Jake kept his bitch mouth shut, normally that worked like three more times. “The doctor has looked over your x-rays, and I’m afraid it looks like you’ve dislocated a vertebra in your lower back. It’s not too serious--it shouldn’t require surgical intervention--but you will be in a brace for several days.” Jake didn’t respond at all, just breathed heavily through his nose and blinked blankly at the ceiling.

“Woah, Jake, hear that?” Amir leaned over the edge of the gurney, right up into Jake’s pale bitch face. “Hear that Jakey? You know who wears back braces? Freaking _nerds_ , pussies and nerds, that’s who. And people with back problems. And nerds.” Jake just blinked sweat out of his eyes. “Jake, you’re sweating like a pig, man, like a fucking sucked pig. Lemme help you with that.” Amir reached out to wipe some of the sweat away and Jake flinched and jerked away, hissed at the movement and closed his eyes. He looked even paler now, but before Amir could say anything else, the nurse stepped in with her tray of nasty needle-y implements.

“Mr. Hurwitz, how would you describe your pain right now, with one being no pain and ten being the worst pain imaginable?” the nurse asked.

“Uh…” Jake blinked, thinking, then said “seven” at the same time that Amir said “fifteen.”

“Or, uh. 38. If you average them,” Amir amended just as Jake closed his eyes like getting pissed at his best friend was making his head hurt.

“That’s not even right,” he mumbled between clenched teeth. Amir ignored him, and the nurse ignored the both of them, or that’s what it seemed like, because she took out a giant needle and started fiddling with the tube of the IV in Jake’s arm.

“I’m going to give you an injection in a moment,” she said, “and we’re going to keep you overnight. After you get fitted for the brace, the doctor will write you a prescription for some over the counter painkillers, but this should take care of you in the meantime.” She grabbed what looked to Amir like a handy wipe and swiped over Jake’s arm, then carefully inserted the needle.

“Oh god Jake oh god it’s going in, it’s in, it’s in oh my god can you feel it? Does it hurt? Can you feel it? Oh god Jake I’m gonna faint, I’m gonna puke, I’m gonna faint.” The world spinning, Amir leaned back against the plastic chair, and then literally like five seconds later opened his eyes. Jake was sleeping too, which was pretty hilarious because he had passed out in five seconds. “Jake. Jake. Jake. Jake. Jake,” Amir leaned over again and shook his friend by the shoulder. Jake moaned and moved his head, but didn’t wake up. Amir shook him harder, until finally Jake’s eyes blinked open slowly, peeled apart like a banana between the hands of two strongly fisted gorillas with sticks up their asses.

“Amir?” he asked, but because he was super drugged it sounded more like “M-Mom?”

“Yeah buddy!” Amir answered, grinning as he peered down at his best friend. “It’s your best friend, Amir!”

Jake groaned and closed his eyes again, then whimpered a little bit. He wasn’t quite as pale as he had been earlier, and his hands were relaxed against the sheets. “Amir, how did you-”

“Get here? Jeezey creezy Jakey you hurt your _back_ , not your head. Remember how your brother came today to make that video about you, his hero, and you fucked it up by being a little bitch? Remember? You took him home and then _pussied_ out and had to go to the hospital? Remember? We dumped him at the train station on our way to the hospital, I wished him luck while you just _groaned_ , sent your brother, your only brother off with a _groan_ , and he’s probably editing his project that you flunked up for him.” Amir threw his head back and laughed, but Jake wasn't laughing with him, wouldn't even make eye contact with him.

“Shit. His project. Shit. Shit. You fucked it up. You fucked it up. Shit shit shit.” Instead of getting pissed like he normally did, Jake seemed to just get upset, his face turning red. He raised two shaking hands to cover his eyes.

“Uh. You flunked it up, mister. Yeah, that’s right, welcome to Responsibilityville, population PLUS ONE now that you’re here.” Amir sat back and chuckled at his own joke, but Jake didn’t seem to find it very funny, unless he was laughing so hard he was crying, but normally when you laugh so hard you cry, there’s a lot more laughing and a lot less crying involved. Jake was doing way more crying than laughing right now, his folded hands rubbing the tears away from his eyes. “Jake?”

“You ruined Micah’s project,” Jake said--well, whimpered. His voice cracked like a prepubescent male chain smoker, a fact that Amir was going to point out, but Jake continued before Amir could get a word in edgewise. “You ruined the project, you fucked up my back, and you’re going to ruin my brother’s grade in the class. This’ll be the first class he’s ever failed, and it’s all your fault.”

Amir was going to protest, because it actualfaxtual was _not_ his fault at all, but Jake lowered his shaking hands and shook his head vigorously. His eyes seemed disconnected from anything and everything in the room, and he shuddered, gasped a breath in and let it out. He’d given up wiping tears from his eyes, it looked like, and instead curled his fingers into fists in his hair. “Fuck,” he whispered. “He’s gonna fail. Fuck.”

“Hey,” Amir leaned forward, and normally he would push back, defend himself, but Jake was trembling uncontrollably now, his breath coming in short little gasps like a nerd with an asthma attack, the veins in his neck strained just like when Amir got upset. His eyes were screwed up tightly, eyelashes sticky with tears but still delicate, like the antennae of a beautiful butterfly drinking the sweet, sweet nectar of a giant beautiful flower. Amir reached out a finger and brushed it right between Jake’s eyebrows, his best friend’s eyelids peeling apart and staring disconnectedly, searching Amir’s face. “Relax. He’s not gonna fail.”

The monitors hooked up to his best friend may not have caught it, but Amir could tell Jake breathed just a little bit easier on his shaky exhale. “How- what are you gonna do?” His voice wobbled and cracked again, and his forehead furrowed like he was going to start crying in earnest again, but Amir gently stroked his best gully’s forehead with one hand, using his other to pull Jake’s arms back down to his sides and then to rub little circles into Jake’s chest.

“Don’t worry about it. I’m not gonna let him fail. Just sleep. Shhhh, just sleep.” Amir kept rubbing circles around Jake’s sternum, tracing his friend’s hairline with his thumb, and Jake trembled but closed his eyes at the touch, his muscles slowly relaxing under Amir’s fingers. Finally, his breathing fell into that soothing rhythm that Amir knew so well from the number of times he’d watched his best friend sleep, and Amir grinned before rising from the bedside. He had work to do.

* * *

How Amir got onto the train that they had put Micah on hours ago was something of a mystery, though how he got the seat right next to him was absolutely not, because it involved forcibly grabbing the guy who had purchased the ticket for that seat by the shirt collar and yelling something about the conductor needing to see him, then squirming into the seat and refusing to move for anything, including when another conductor came back and demanded he move. “Don’t take me from my boy!” Amir pleaded, and Micah’s horrified wide-eyed stare and unsure nods seemed to be enough to convince the conductor this wasn’t going to happen any other way. Once he had left in disgust, Amir turned to his best friend’s brother, who looked just as scared and confused as he had at the office.

“Well?” Amir demanded, taking off his coat to get comfortable for the rest of the ride- only about a half-hour left, but he had done more work in less time. That wasn’t entirely true, as Amir really _never_ did work, but no one had to know that, Micah least of all. “How far have you gotten on the project?”

Micah just stared at him warily. “What are you doing here?’ he asked finally, and Amir rolled his eyes, reached for Micah’s backpack.

“You gotta get the video exported onto something!” he said. “Jesus Christ kid, you wanna fail and disappoint everyone in your entire life?” Micah flinched, and Amir sighed heavily. “You’re not gonna fail,” he reassured him, reaching for his own bag this time. “Look, we’ll do it on my laptop, your computer is probably too crummy. And you _better_ thank me in the credits, or I’m gonna write your teacher about plagiarism.”

“But I didn’t ask for you to help me,” Micah protested weakly. “Does Jake know you’re here?”

“He sent me,” Amir shot back simply. “Now look, do you even have the cable with you so we can export it? Jesus Christ it’s like working with a literal baby.”

Micah cried twice in the six hours it took for them to finish editing--really they worked for three hours, and the other three were Amir grabbing the computer from Micah and changing the text, or the number of voiceover takes that Amir said things that couldn’t go into the video, but who’s counting in the end? Jake tried to beat the shit out of Amir when he heard about the whole train thing, but the video got a freaking _D+_ so really he was just an ungrateful bitch who had nothing to complain about. When Jake heard that, he shoved Amir out the door instead of punching his face in, wincing where his backbrace chafed against his arms. “Get out of here,” he snarled, and Amir stumbled away, rubbing his neck, but then Jake called his name again. “Amir,” and Amir stop[ed in the doorway to Jake’s apartment, looked over his shoulder at his best friend.“Thanks.”

Amir’s smile didn’t go away for three full days after that.


End file.
